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A former Pentagon contractor works with secretive sections of US special forces, then ups and moves to Russia. He gets married, radicalizes and starts popping up on Telegram channels as the leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group recruiting Americans.
Soon, allegations swirl that he is a Russian spy.
While this sounds like something Tom Clancy would write, it is reality: Rinaldo Nazzaro, better known as the leader of the Base, once worked in drone targeting with the US Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently, the Guardian revealed allegations from inside the Base that he was long suspected of working with the FSB, one of Russia’s main intelligence services.
If true, the startling revelation about Nazzaro fits into the Kremlin’s well-documented global mission of co-opting far-right and criminal organizations to carry out attacks on western democracies.
That mission is very much alive and well.
“The Kremlin plays the long game and is highly invested in developing assets that can be used to wreak havoc in the west,” said Colin Clarke, a geopolitics expert and director of research at the Soufan Center who has closely followed Russia’s flurry of sabotage operations around the world. “Russian intelligence services are using far-right terror groups to their advantage.”
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, world governments have been on edge: without the unlimited military resources it had during the cold war era, the Kremlin has turned to the tactics of hybrid warfare to undermine its enemies and neighbors. A spate of suspected covert assassinations, arsons and sabotage in the west have followed.
“Russia has also been accused of funding far-right political parties, which can serve as a Trojan horse of sorts for more nefarious operations,” said Clarke.
Part of this global mission has included using disinformation to stoke xenophobic online sentiments in Britain and elsewhere. Laundering cash payments to far-right political parties across Europe through dodgy media outlets has also become a mainstay in the Kremlin playbook.
But in some other cases, using connections through its globally designated terror group the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), the Kremlin has provided on-the-ground paramilitary training to Swedish extremists outside their country and then sent them back. In another separate incident, Russia was suspected of having a hand in getting Polish militants to attempt a false flag attack in Ukraine.
“Since Moscow can be strategic when it comes to state-sponsored terrorism, the Kremlin may be cultivating relationships with these groups as a form of strategic depth, saving them for a rainy day so to speak,” Clarke explained, referring to the Base. “In some ways, it’s similar to how countries like Iran and Pakistan maintain linkages with terrorist groups.”
In October, the head of the UK’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, accused Russian agents of being behind “actions conducted with increasing recklessness” on European and British soil.
Stateside, there is not the same extensive evidence of similar direct action via Kremlin assets using far-right extremist groups – but there has been no shortage of suspicions.
“That was a joke going around and we never confirmed it, but you tell me,” said Scott Payne, a former FBI undercover agent who infiltrated the Base, about Nazzaro’s links to Russian handlers.
“You got a guy who is a citizen, graduated from Villanova, [worked] somewhere in the army, flipped, radicalized, and then moved to St Petersburg, Russia, and has a Russian wife and kids.”
Payne, who recently released the memoir Code Name: Pale Horse about his experiences in the Base and other assignments with the far right as a bureau agent, explained that Nazzaro set off alarm bells both inside his group and the FBI.
“I didn’t confirm it, but I was told they had tracked a million dollars going through his account, but all he was doing was supposed to be teaching English?” Payne said. “It goes with the [modus operandi], right? If you’re talking about foreign influence [operations].”
Nazzaro, who appeared in a widely panned interview on Russian state television in 2020 denying that he was an agent of their government, has roundly denied any claims he has nefarious government backers.
“The news media has recently, once again, dragged out the old and tired accusation of me being a government agent,” Nazzaro said in a Telegram statement released in late April. “I have never had contact with Russian security services.”
But in April, the Base unveiled a Ukrainian cell offering operatives money for assassinating politicians in the country or attacking police and military targets. Backlash followed, with Ukrainian and American far-right Telegram accounts accusing Nazzaro of being a spy in league with Russia. It also coincided with reports that Russia was enhancing its recruitment of Ukrainian locals, whom it is sending on suicide missions in the Kherson region.
“How does the Base have money for so [many] bots and rewards for actions?” speculated one anti-Nazzaro user affiliated with the Base on Telegram. “I wonder who funds them.”
Sources inside the US intelligence community had previously said there were suspicions Nazzaro was working for or being financed by Russian security services. At one point, given his residence in St Petersburg, the former nerve center of the infamous mercenary outfit the Wagner Group, theories arose that he could be working with it. For a time, Wagner had enjoyed a close relationship with the RIM and other neo-Nazi groups as it was ambitiously looking to partner with foreign elements and increase its global reach.
Clarke noted that the news that Nazzaro was purportedly acting under the direction of the Kremlin was not shocking to analysts in or outside government.
“If this is true, it will be interesting to see how Nazzaro was recruited,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Russia is maintaining relationships with far-right groups throughout the globe, from Latin America to eastern Europe and beyond.”
